


Do It for the Vine

by walkingsaladshooter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bets & Wagers, F/M, Falling in love in the twenty-first century, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Rivalry, This is ridiculous and I am not sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20672030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingsaladshooter/pseuds/walkingsaladshooter
Summary: When Rey, also known as sunscavenger on Vine, receives an offer from Vine star KyloRen to help her grow her viewership, she rejects him flat-out. But things take a turn when Vine announces the app will be shutting down forever in a few short months. Rey, determined to make the most of what time remains, bets KyloRen that she can surpass his follower count before the end of Vine. And when he takes her wager, neither of them have any idea what they're in for.





	Do It for the Vine

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I write a fic in its entirety before I start posting, but you know what? I miss the middle-school days of throwing caution to the wind, writing by the seat of my pants, and posting as I go. So that's what I'll be doing with this fic.
> 
> Is it silly? Yes. Do I also love it? Yes. I hope you love it too.
> 
> And as a caveat: I never really made Vines, and my memory of the UI of the app is shaky at best. Please allow for some inaccuracies and don't judge too harshly - this is all written with love.
> 
> And finally, huge thank you to [crossingwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter) for losing her damn mind about this with me and for providing both a beta-read and a beautiful [moodboard](https://twitter.com/nuanceismyjam/status/1173796202984423424).
> 
> Tags will be updated as necessary as we go. Enjoy!

****It’s good, Ben thinks, that he majored in Classics at college, because at least that way his education was always doomed to be a waste of money. If he’d had an actually useful major and a viable career plan, he’d never hear the end of it from his parents about “the whole video thing.”

Which is how Leia manages to dismissively but not unkindly refer to the one thing giving Ben’s life any sense of purpose lately.

Presently, to support that sense of purpose, he’s crouched in a copse of trees at the edge of the small park next to his work building. A twenty-eight-year-old man in a nice sweater, nice dark-wash jeans, and oxfords, struggling to not fall on his ass as he squats as low as possible under the trees and behind a bush.

Classics major. Very dignified.

Ben checks the angle on his phone screen. It looks like he’s in actual nature—he’s low enough that the bushes are blocking the view of the downtown office buildings. He presses the record button with his thumb.

“Okay,” he calls.

A few seconds pass in silence. Ben stares into the distance and, well, wiggles in a way he hopes will more or less simulate walking for the half-second it’ll matter. Then, from the other side of the bushes:

“_I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream—” _

He only has a few seconds to play with, so he makes sure his reaction is quick and precise. He darts his gaze to the side, grimaces, and slowly leans backwards out of the frame.

“Okay,” he calls again, pushing himself back up, the video still recording. “Let’s go again.”

He resets, resumes his wiggle. Again, the singing. Again, his weirded-out, uncomfortable reaction, but he tries a different approach, a different face journey. And then again, and then again, before he finally calls, “All right, one of those should be fine.”

The foliage parts and Rose appears, grinning. “You got good framing?”

“Yeah. I just hope it’s not a stupid idea.”

“You say that every time. It all comes together in the editing, right?”

“Right.” Ben ends the recording and shoves his phone back into his pocket. “We’ve got ten more minutes on break.”

“The falafel truck is here today.”

“Falafel. Groundbreaking.”

Rose rolls her eyes. “Come on.”

It’s nice, Ben thinks, fifteen minutes later when he’s clocked back in at his desk, tzatziki tangy and bright on his tongue and e-mails being studiously ignored, to have someone help him film. Usually he prefers filming alone. It’s easier—he can make creative decisions without taking anyone else’s feelings into account. (Because he never wants to hurt anyone’s feelings, but if the product is better a certain way, then it’s better that way.) But it’s nice, with Rose. She never judges him for eating up so much time on this. Which is a little surprising itself—Rose, though sweet, can be judgmental as hell.

But it’s probably, he thinks, as he finishes his falafel pita and finally opens his e-mail to grimace at all the new requests, because she really, really loves Vine.

—

_ Ben Solo:_  
_ Don’t kill me _

_Rose Tico:_  
_ that’s promising_  
_ what’s up, mr tree?_

_ Ben Solo:_  
_ I’m going over the footage and I think it needs a quick cut to Sleeping Beauty to sell it better _

_ Rose Tico:_  
_ need to film more tomorrow? _

_Ben Solo:_  
_ And I really want to get this uploaded tonight so I’m thinking of just cutting in the movie footage_  
_ But that won’t make sense with your singing we recorded_  
_ So I might just use the original song_  
_ I’m sorry_

Ben chews the inside of his lip and stares at his phone screen. He should have known. Damn his afternoon optimism. Rose’s help always feels nice, but inevitably he has to consider her feelings when he needs to make changes.

Finally, three little bubbles dance onto the screen. Ben waits.

_Rose Tico:_  
_ it’s fine_  
_ you gotta  
do it for the viiiiiine_

A sharp cocktail of guilt and relief washes through him.

At least now he can focus on editing.

Filming is the more awkward part for Ben. It always feels unnatural and clunky. He’s been pushing himself more often lately to film in public when he needs to instead of making concessions, but god he hates being seen when he’s doing it. It feels weird and he feels conspicuous and honestly, it’s not fun.

But the editing—he could do this all day.

He loves nudging the trimming of a clip just a millisecond further because he knows in his gut it’ll land better, and then it does, and he feels inordinately satisfied. He loves combing through footage, finding the best takes, the best angles, cutting them apart and piecing them together as needed to make the final product sing. He loves the deep sense of accomplishment he can’t even explain to anyone else when he watches it through and knows this is the final cut.

It’s why he’s exacting, and why, though it makes his stomach heavy with guilt, he doesn’t hesitate to do something like cut Rose’s entire performance. Once he sees the shape of the video and actually gets it there, it’s always, always worth it.

His job is—fine. It’s a job. He doesn’t especially care about data certification or whatever they like to call it, but it could be worse. Still, the days drag long when you don’t care about what you’re doing.

The hour or so he spends working on the video after he gets home is the highlight of his day. And yeah, when he uploads it to his account and sees the views ticker start rolling up and the comments start pinging in, the fleeting dopamine rush of attention from strangers on the internet is nice, too.

Fortunately for Ben, his Vines are pretty damn popular.

—

The back room of the Pequod’s coffee shop in the northside mall is approximately the size of Rey’s bedroom in her tiny apartment. With the fridges, freezers, ice machine, dish wash station, dump sink, baker’s rack, and manager’s desk crammed in there, there’s approximately three feet by three feet of open floor in the entire place.

Two years into this job, Rey is very good at folding herself up in that tiny space during her ten-minute breaks.

It’s Friday afternoon, and it’s pumpkin spice season, so she hears the bustle and rush continuing out on the floor, but she blocks it out. Tens are sacred. Tens are a bubble. She may be the shift manager on duty, but if anyone speaks to her for anything less than the hot water tap breaking and spewing boiling water all over everyone, she’ll claw their eyes out.

Huddled in her customary spot, Rey scarfs the peanut butter sandwich she brought from home and scrolls through the Vine app on her phone. It’s been a couple days since she posted anything, so she doesn’t have much in the way of notifications, but she likes to try to keep up on watching the accounts she follows.

She giggles at one from bangarangarang, aka Poe; she’s not terribly close with him, but she knows he lives somewhere in the same city as her. He leans heavily into the dadaist millennial humor, which Rey, though she may be not technically a millennial, still hits home for her.

She gives a heart to the latest from Kaydel Ko Connix, a professional ballerina whose account consists solely of vids of her all over NYC, dancing classically to decidedly non-classical music.

And then she comes across KyloRen. If Poe is dadaist, KyloRen is the soul of dry, self-deprecating humor. His account isn’t as tightly themed as Kaydel’s but is far less random than Poe’s. Jokes at his own expense, observations on the little idiosyncrasies of just being a human being. Perfect crystallizations of those stupid moments in life where it’s like, _ well, I guess this is happening. _They’re always tightly edited, and he has solid comedic timing. It’s no surprise he has so many followers.

Rey clicks on his latest upload, titled _ I make a lousy prince charming. _

It’s cute—KyloRen walking in the woods, coming across Sleeping Beauty singing the classic Disney song, and being weirded out by it instead of enamored. It makes her do a little snuffle-laugh through her nose. Hardly anything groundbreaking, but it’s well-timed, and the way he leans backwards out of the frame reminds her of leaning back the front seat in a car to avoid being seen. The juxtaposition is chuckle-worthy.

With a wry grin, she types in a comment.

_ sunscavenger: you know it’s prince philip, right? prince charming is from snow white _

“Rey—”

“_Ten, Ronith! _”

Ronith blanches and scurries back out to the floor. Rey relaxes her scowl and returns to her sandwich. She still has three minutes left.

A notification appears at the top of her screen: a reply to a comment on Vine. Rey taps it open and involuntarily smiles.

_ KyloRen: Don’t try to school me on Disney princes, scavenger. The black diamond collection raised me more than my parents did. _

He doesn’t follow her—she’s never seen him in the notifications on her videos—but sometimes he replies to her comments on his. Usually they’re like this, laced with humor. He’s funny, and she likes that maybe she occasionally makes him laugh.

Biting the tip of her tongue between her teeth, she makes a quick decision. She’s nearly due back from her break, so she has to hurry. Rey taps on KyloRen’s name and types out a brief private message.

_ disney “prince” FMK hard mode: aladdin, shang, eugene _

She takes a long drink of her iced tea and is tying her apron back on when a reply comes in, and she gives in to the impulse to check it before washing her hands and throwing herself back into the fray.

_ Who the fuck is Eugene? _

Damn. She was starting to like him, too.

——

The mall, and consequently Pequod’s, closes at nine. Actual close is done by nine-thirty. Forty-five minutes and two buses after that, Rey finally climbs the metal staircase along the outside of the house up to her apartment.

She and Finn live on the third floor. It’s smaller than the apartments on the first two floors, and since it’s technically the attic, the ceilings slope dramatically. But it’s what they can both afford. And for an attic, it has a lot of windows, which makes Rey—who grew up in Arizona and who also has a deep affection for houseplants—quite happy.

Now, though, at nearly half past ten, it’s all dark, the curtains pulled shut. She locks the door (doorknob, deadbolt, slide bolt), kicks off her sneakers, and sighs.

The apartment is dim and quiet. The yellow glow of the table lamp and the pale flicker of the television are all she can see around the corner from the kitchen.

Rey digs through her bag and pulls out two croissants. They were going to get thrown away at the end of her shift, so she brought them home, which is technically not allowed but everyone does anyway. Especially Rey, who can’t stand to waste food.

She takes the croissants out of their crinkly plastic wrappers and slices them in half. Rummaging in the fridge, she pulls out a block of sharp cheddar and cuts off a few thin pieces; she slices half an apple into the same thickness and layers it on the croissants with the cheese. While the sandwiches warm in the microwave, she quietly washes the knife.

Her feet ache and she’s still buzzing with restlessness from her late shift, but when she carries the plate into the living room, a soft smile blooms easily on her face. Finn is sprawled on the couch, dozing with the blanket pulled half over his side. Rey bumps his leg with her knee until he jerks awake.

“Sorry,” she says. “I made dinner.”

Finn squints at her blearily for a few moments. Then he rubs his eyes and scoots over to one side of the couch, lifting the blanket. Rey crawls under it on the other side and sets the plate between them. “What’re we watching?”

“You know it’s Great British Bake Off.”

“Mm.” Rey takes a bite of her sandwich and scrunches her nose at him. “You’re grumpy.”

“I have a nap hangover.”

“Sandwich, then bed. You’ll bounce back.”

“Hm.” Finn wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Thanks, Rey. This is good.”

She smiles.

Finn does go to bed pretty much as soon as he finishes his dinner, with another “thank you” and a quick kiss on top of her head. Rey lies on the couch, still needing more time to wind down before she can sleep, and lets Mary Berry’s voice lull her a little.

She’s tired, but she’s happy. Her little apartment is nothing fancy, but it’s clean and bright and Finn is here and they don’t have much, but they have what they need. Work is harder than people outside the service industry want to give her credit for, but she loves it. Bake Off is nice. Apple and cheese croissant sandwiches are nice. Being with her best friend is nice. Rey feels that sunshine feeling, that warm glow in her chest that makes her smiles actually genuine instead of forced. She loves this feeling.

And she loves sharing it.

——

At one o’clock in the morning, sunscavenger uploads a new video to Vine. The caption just reads _ midnight dance party _. It’s six seconds of her lying on the floor with her legs up the wall, swinging her feet and waving her upper arms back and forth like windshield wipers, a clip from Warpaint’s “New Song” playing all the while.

It’s simple, silly, a little tongue-in-cheek.

But Rey is happy. And she hopes the video makes someone else happy, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, Vines are less funny when you're describing them in prose rather than, y'know, watching them. But we soldier on!
> 
> P.S. Don't be afraid to come say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nuanceismyjam), [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/nuanceismyjam), or [Tumblr](http://nuanceismyjam.tumblr.com/)! (Which I use in that order, in terms of frequency.)


End file.
